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Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

What's the safety situation like?

I found that pretty much every place outside of the capital felt very safe. I think this was helped by the lack of traditional "danger" signs everywhere. This basically amounts to...all of the people we came across were busy employed in some kind of industrious activity + the ubiquitous feeling of good governance everywhere. It was quite heartening to be honest.

It was not a "developed country" feeling everywhere. But it felt safe and welcoming everywhere we went. For example, I don't recall seeing bars on windows outside of the capital. And every local who we interacted with was polite and honest. When out shopping and eating at local places, we never found we ended up with something like a "tourist menu" or something with higher prices.

An anecdote, one woman who I was with forgot her smartphone at a roadside restaurant. A quick call and a drive back and the phone was returned without any fuss.

youtube has lots of travel videos around Costa Rica if you are interested. https://youtu.be/baXO0hC2GVg

I've definitely felt less safe in many parts of the U.S.

Yeah, I just got a friend's forgotten card back out of an ATM here in San José not that long ago! Costa Rica is definitely a place where you shouldn't be leaving your phone right out on the beach while you go to swim but it's also got some very good people in it who don't see the value in giving the place a bad name.

In 2013 kidnaping and robberies were quite common; a colleague escaped a kidnaping attempt after a car chase with AK47 fire, some colleagues were extracted covertly from the country when they were incidental witnesses to a gang shooting in the restaurant they were having dinner, I saw in the shopping mall all security guards carrying big, bad shotguns on they back - this is the only country where I saw that, even Israel has less obvious security in place.

No idea how is it today, it may be a lot better.

This sounds more like El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala than Costa Rica.

The place was San Jose, Costa Rica; the mall is Multiplaza Escazu.

Worth mentioning San Jose is reputed as the one dodgy place of 0 interest you should avoid. I was told exactly this by an expat who has been there 20 years and have heard similar elsewhere.

I've heard this from expats and guidebooks written by foreigners, and even some Costa Ricans too

If a normal tourist only sees the blocks around the Ticabus bus station at 11pm and the blocks around the bus stop to their tourist destination then of course it's an ugly city.

However the Escazú, Sabana and San Pedro neighbourhoods are quite nice.

The downtown is functional (while not beautiful), compared to any other of the Central American capitals.

And the downtown main street has wide sidewalks for walking (unlike San Salvador), grid style streets (unlike Tegucigalpa), nice weather (unlike Panama), government offices, hotels, nearby (unlike all the others), and accessible by public transport.

this doesn't stack with my experience of the country at all. Sure Guatemala or El Sal but costa rica is super safe.

I was there like 10 years ago, traveled across a lot of the country via public buses. It was one of the safest countries I visited.

I think it's relatively safe compared to it's neighbouring countries. Though, of course, it's neighbouring countries are what could be called failed states with some of the worst safety records of all countries in the world.

Excellent, one of the safer countries in the world.

You're twice as likely to be murdered in parts of the San Francisco BA.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/984826/homicide-rate-cos...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Homicides-are-up-3...

It's a little weird to compare local crime hotspots to a national average. Costa Rica seems to have about twice the murder rate of the U.S., but that's still low. By "low", I mean if the average accurately represents your risk, it wouldn't be worth worrying about day to day.

Safety is highly situational, and it depends a lot on the way crime happens. If it's criminals killing criminals (e.g. gangs), ordinary citizens and visitors might be fine. But if there is a lot of opportunistic crime, a foreigner might be a target.

It's probably safer than your closest major US city. People think Central America and think violence, but Costa Rica truly is a diamond in the ruff.

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